Haven't been on in a while, business has been keeping me busy. My apologies if I clear out my inbox without respomding to every single message right now. Got lotsa new stuff to post, just need to organize everything.

I was kneeling down on a kitchen floor. It wasn't my kitchen, it was like the one from Leave it to Beaver or something, only in color, red and white checkered, like the inside of a Five Guy's. There were all these baby kangaroos. At least I believe the were baby ones. They looked more like miniature kangaroos with weiner dog heads. And for some reason it was quite imperative that I capture and dissolve them in a blob of paste on the floor. The creatures were quite docile and for some reason it was very important that I gently hold them down as the paste covered and consumed their bodies. But I really didn't want to do it. So I kept trying to left them escape and they would just wander around the kitchen. It was quite frustrating.

Etsy has been treating me well, tho I can't help but worry that someday it will go the way of eBay. I used to do very well on eBay when I started selling on there years ago, but back then it was just a huge yard sale with all kinds of odd stuff. Now I barely do anything cuz everything favors the buyers and large volume resellers. I fear that eventually Etsy will succumb to the forces of evil and become a place for crappy brand new fake craft stuff.

So I've been thinking that I might as well try setting up my own site to hedge against future instability. If nothing else it looks good to have a simple business card with "doctorgus.com" or something where people can find me. And the money I avoid on Etsy fees could be applied to advertising so I do not get completely lost in the mists of the interwebs.

Anybody have any experience owning/running/setting up a store with carts and all that?

Any suggestions where I should go for hosting or services? I've been looking at places like www.dreamhost.com/hosting.html , they seem to have nice bandwidth and space as well as having a green initiative which is a nice tie-in with my theme on top of it. I am pretty good at generic coding, but I would need a cart checkout system and it feels a bit daunting to start fom scratch. Should I start on a wordpress kinda page and upgrade from them (but they don't do carts, right? idk)?

Will I just get lost in the internet and should I just find more sites like etsy to sell on simultaneously? What other sites like Etsy should I be considering selling on in the meantime?

Do any of my watchers here do web design and might possibly be interested in doing a freelance job for me? I would just need you to get the site up and running in a way so it's kinda turnkey operation that I could fiddle with later.

Any help or random thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Perhaps I should be a hardcore artist creating for art's sake and refuse to sell anything. I don't believe I would make a good starving artist though.

Well, it's that time of year again, the time when I get my invitation to enter the 52nd Midwestern Exhibition at the Rourke Art Museum. The show is in the summer, but I always wait til the last minute and ship my pieces right on the deadline. I wanto do something really awesome.

This time there is an added invitation to submit something for their show in February. The theme is "Let Them Eat Cake" and/or just the broader theme of Valentine's. My initial thoughts are some heart shaped forks or some kinda crazy cupid baby. Got finish this one up by the end of January.

For the 52nd the theme is "What Would Dante Do?" and I'm still searching for ideas, but I'm thinking rolling ball sculpture. Maybe something else, I usually send 2 or 3 pieces tho, so I can play with some other media.

I always like sending art to the gallery. Last 7 or 8 shows all my pieces have sold. Although maybe that is due to them being lower priced submissions. It's nice now since we have 3 generations at each show. Myself, my mom, and my grandpa .

Just want to share something that happened to me yesterday which caused me a bit of disconcertion.

I was wandering around Hobby Lobby and found myself unable to resist all the 50% of sales. It wasn't long before I stared talking myself into buying a Mario Kart slot car set. But finally I decided against it for the time being and worked my way over to the model kits. By this point my car was full of jewelry findings and other crap, but it was lacking in 1/48 scale airplanes. The price was right on a P-38J Lightning so I picked it up.

When I unwrapped the box at home I was immediately surprised by the fact that the Hobby Lobby price tag was underneath the shrink wrap. I did not think this significant at the time, but as soon as I opened the box it made sense. Someone had returned this kit to the store. Somebody partially assembled the model, said "f this" and returned it. And they put it back out for sale at the store!

First of all, who returns a plastic model? Especially one they had to glue together? And the worst part is that whoever put the kit together did it wrong and put the pilot in backwards!

How do they not notice this before they put it back out for sale?

It's just one of those things that is so unexpectedly annoying yet ultimately meaningless that I don't know if i should be mad or not. It doesn't really matter anyway since I was gonna flip the kit upside down and turn it into a spaceship.